So it's finally done. After I've played FF3 on my phone I finally went full on mobile game.
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Final Fantasy Dimensions is a retro Final Fantasy game releaesed in 2012 for iOS and Android. It attempts to be a throwback to the good old times when FF was not yet about whiny teenagers and instead a medieval steampunk classic adventure with knights and mages and dragons and stuff!
Let's see if it succeeded in that, shall we.
Presentation
FFD looks as you would expect any other retro FF to look. 2D sprites moving over 2D sprites with minimal animation. Really not above anything you would've seen in a SNES games. They splurged a bit on the effects of some special attacks and magic but it's not sophisticated enough to jar with the rest of the aesthetics. There are no 3D models anywhere, not even in Airship travel which uses the popular 2.5D mode.
I will note however that I was a bit disappointed with the resolution of most of the sprites. I know it should look retro but that doesn't mean they have to shove the pixels in your face even when you're playing it on a fairly small HD screen.
But you wouldn't play this anyway if you cared about graphics, so moving on.
The Music is excellent. Simple as that. You got your balads, your orchestra, your rock infused classical themes. It was composed by Naoshi Mizuta, probably most known for his work on FFXI as main composer and several contributions in Square Enix games onwards. It really takes a lot of cues from both the retro and the more modern PSX games. The main battle theme especially is so reminiscent of FFIX's theme that it's almost eary.
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Another really cool thing is that the game gives you an option between an orchestrated soundtrack or a chiptune variant, which can be switched at any time. That really drives home the nostalgia trip. Here's the same battle music in retro.
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Overall pretty much what you would expect when you hear "Retro Final Fantasy".
Story
The story was for me the most surprising part. If you hear retro and story and mobile game in the same sentence you will probably start yawning. But it seems the creators wanted to actually make an engrossing experience.
While the story structure is extremely linear, formulaic and by no stretch surprising, it actually takes a few more turns than you would expect.
In an innovative twist it tells the story of our 8 heroes ,4 Light and 4 Dark, as they get seperated very early on. So now you basically get 2 adventures in one, having 2 seperate parties to guide through their own adventures. The story itself is delivered episodically with each ark clearly seperated having a name and all. In each ark you will meat new NPCs which may join your party temporarily and which fates are tightly woven into the main plot. It still is standard Fantasy fare so don't get your hopes up for any unforseen twists. Complexity wise it is definitely above most of the early FFs.
The writers noticeably put in some effort in developing all characters including the NPCs and villains and it even works for most of them. There are some nice little subplots going on, giving us a glimpse into the lives of each one of them. I'd also like to take this moment for a shout out to my best girl Alba. Out of the 8 heroes she is the most fun and gladly also the most vocal, having more than just a few chips on her shoulder. Every dialogue with her was a blast. This was also due to probably some very deliberate translation by the english localizers. Trust me when I say that the story and the whole game would only be half as entertaining if it wasn't for her. Though many of you will probably hate her.
I clocked in at about 55h which does not include idle time but a good amount of grinding. Don't expect you can rush through it as there is a good amount of cutscenes and dialogue.
Gameplay
Maybe the most important for a lot of people but there are only a few things of note. The main gameplay is as classic as it gets:
- standard ATB
- Job System
- Overworld and dungeons
- Random encounters
- special attacks, magic, summons etc
- get EXP and level up, grind if you feel the need to
- standard overlayed 4 directional pad, tap for everything else
There are some things that need mentioning.
Some people may know that I'm an absolute sucker for Job systems and they are used so rarely that I jumped when I found out that it would be featured in FFD. Though that only meant that my disappointment of its implementation would be all the more crushing. While Job systems generally stand for freedom, experiments and customization, and lots and lots of grinding I found out that the game had the opposite in mind. And here comes for me the biggest flaw of this game, and its name is GATING.
As someone who loves to level, all my grinding came to a stop very quickly when my jobs just stopped leveling up. Every character gets initially the 8 basic jobs and is free to level them until level 3(of level 20 maximum). To advance further in these jobs you need the worst currency invented in any game ever, Job Points. Each Job point will raise the max level of 1 Job by 1 level. Job points can only be acquired at first via story progression. Every chepter of the story provides you with a fixed amount of Job Points for each character. Meaning from the bat you know that you won't be able to max all the jobs you want. That you either have to experiment or just pick a job and hope that it has cool abilities. Picked the wrong jobs for your character? Too bad, no rewind button! There are other means to get Job points through other means in very late and post game so if you so desire you are able to max all characters in all jobs, but who plays post game anyways. I want my characters maxed BEFORE I visit the Final Boss goddammit.
The sad part is that there is absolutely no need for all this gating. You can get overpowered even with only a few jobs mastered and regular leveling up will go a long way as well. I really have no idea why the designers felt they need to restrict the player so much.
However, as horrible this sounds, it kind of eleviates itself the more you progress. You will usually get more JPs than you can currently level without extreme grinding and in the end you will have at least 3-5 full mastered jobs on any party member, which is more than enough for any character build. Also, since you have essentially 2 parties, you are able to try out the jobs you didn't take with your first party, with the other.
There is apparently no Job that is a complete dud so almost all of them are viable for the late game and you won't feel as if you missed out on something.
While the ability system is absolutely standard(essentially a copy of FFV) they did add another nice twist to it. Abilities from different jobs can be mixed to so called Fusion-Abilities. These abilities are usually stronger variants from the 2 base abilities and can be used with any job. There are F-Abilities for every possible job combination so frequent mixing is encouraged. They will get absolutely essential in the late game where you will rely on them more than your regular abilities so that mixes things up a bit.
Another thing which you probably won't care about, but I absolutely loved, is that Summoners are for once absolutely viable. While summons are in all other FF games only useful to a certain point and then quickly become obsolete, summons in FFD are so strong and useful that they become almost essential in late and post game. In the end my Summoner became my main healer while my Healer became my main magic damage dealer. It's crazy but also incredibly fun to call so many summons even in the late game. It's a Final Fantasy thing^^
Another important thing I should probably mention is the linearity of the game. While there is a big and connected standard overworrld map and you do get to use a ship and airship during the game, it will all be practically on rails until the late game. In the worst case each chapter is just walking from one dungeon to another with a city in between to stock up and advance plot. That's not to say that there is nothing else to explore. Each area gives you at least one optional dungeon to find, so there is at least some kind of exploration involved.
When you do get your airship in the end and are actually allowed to fly it yourself, you have effectively already been to all of the towns and dungeons so there is not much to do anymore.
This and the early gating leads me to believe that the creators are from the new school FFs where a tightly packed and focused experiece is favored instead of freedom. You have to see for yourself if you like it. However it is definitely not as linear as FFXIII and more like the early FFs with just a tiny bit more linear world design.
I'm probably making this out worse than it actually is. Essentially if you liked the gameplay of any of the first 9 FFs, you will probably like this one too.
Final Fantasy-ness
With all confidence I can say that this is a true Final Fantasy game if there ever was one. It has all of the elements and puts them together nicely. This could've easily been a regular numbered release. It doesn't have to shy away from any othe the other 3 SNES games and if it had come out in Gen 4 instead of either of the other ones it probably would have been regarded as oa pretty well rounded entry.
It is definitely not a cheap mobile game knockoff trying to cash in on a popular name. This game has heart and its own identity.
Conclusion
I wouldn't say that I was having a blast all the time with Final Fantasy Dimensions, which is mostly due to the initial restrictiveness of the gameplay. But now that I finished it, it left me with a nice and warm and fuzzy feeling in my stomach. I'm so glad that I didn't miss out on it.
So if you like Final Fantasy and own a smartphone and yearn for a simpler time, then definitely check this one out.
tl;dr
- competent visuals
- really nice music
- very classic gameplay with some gating issues
- standard story and characters but with their own identity
- 40-60h retro JRPG goodness
- Play it if you like Final fantasy as a series, don't if you have a more sophisticated taste in RPGs
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